It's called Neighborhood WATCH, people. Not Neighborhood ENGAGE or Neighborhood TAKE MATTERS INTO YOUR OWN HANDS. Watch for trouble, call police.

The George Zimmerman trial was a swamp of politics, race, controversy,
and emotions. I'm not sure which was lamer, the prosecution's strategy or the
defense's knock-knock joke.

In the end, the 6-woman jury delivered the only thing they
could, given what they had to work with: A 'not guilty' verdict.

Some thoughts:

This whole thing was a senseless tragedy.

I don't believe George Zimmerman set out to kill a black
kid. Or a kid of any color. And I don't believe he followed Trayvon Martin with intent to
kill him.

I do believe the gun he carried gave Zimmerman the
confidence to follow Trayvon Martin and then get out of his car to confront
him, even after a police dispatcher instructed him to back off. If he wasn't
packing, there wouldn't have been a confrontation. No confrontation, no dead
kid. No murder trial.

I don't believe Trayvon Martin was up to no good on that
fateful night. He was a 17 year-old kid in a hoodie going home from the store
who felt threatened by the guy who was following him.

If Martin jumped Zimmerman, as Zimmerman said, it was
because he was scared and trying to defend himself. Jumping the dude was where Martin erred, and it cost him
his life. He would probably still be alive if he had just kept walking.

I think the 2nd degree murder charge was an
intentional over-reach by the state. The DA was under pressure to charge
Zimmerman with something, so she went Grizzly with a murder charge even though
there wasn't enough evidence to support it, under Florida law. The DA never put
any pressure on itself to win, they just wanted to go through the motions and get it over with.

The prosecution, had they really wanted a conviction, would
have had a better shot by going for a manslaughter charge, or even aggravated
assault, from the get-go.

The judge's inclusion of manslaughter near the end of
the trial carried the weight of an afterthought.

The defense did what they had to do by keeping the water
muddy. Reasonable doubt was theirs all along, and the prosecution did nothing
to bring the shadows into focus.

It's called Neighborhood WATCH, people. Not Neighborhood
ENGAGE or Neighborhood TAKE MATTERS INTO YOUR OWN HANDS. Watch for trouble,
call police.

I do believe Zimmerman regrets killing Martin. He was found
not guilty, but he will have to deal with the death of this young man the rest
of his life.

Robert Zimmerman, Jr., George's brother, represented his
brother and family well. He was a well-spoken, thoughtful voice of reason in
the hot lights of several TV interviews.

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